Popular Poll Questions with Poll Examples and Sample Polls

Polls are prompt market research methods used to gauge feedback and opinion. They consist of a single closed-ended question typically limited to a maximum of 7 answer options to gather instant responses. The most fundamental step towards creating a great poll is the selection of right poll questions. Once you understand the right poll question types to be used in your research, you’ve taken the most important step towards capturing the most accurate responses to your poll.

In situations where an organization requires immediate results, polls with one of the many poll questions discussed in this article can be sent out via Email, intercept on a website or shared on social media using a poll software.

Multiple choice questions have 2 or more answer options, typically limited to 5-6 that respondents will have to choose from. Based on their preferences, respondents can select the best from mentioned options. Create multiple choice poll questions by understanding the reason behind formulating this question along with the target audience for the poll.

This is the most commonly used poll question as it provides simple and straightforward answer options: Yes, No and occasionally, Maybe. This question is used to understand whether customers have adapted well to the new product or whether the cost of the product is appropriate to the market or does a section of market need new product features. Questions that can be most impactful in case of Yes/No options will fall into this category. Poll creators use this question type to filter customers as per their criteria.

Understanding brand shareability is critical in deciding customer satisfaction. Net Promoter Score (NPS) question is used to measure brand loyalty on a scale of 0-10. Promoters, detractors, and passives of an organization can be identified by asking them whether they’ll be sharing their good, average or bad experience with your organization to their colleagues and friends.

Likert scale questions are used to measure the degree of agreement or disagreement respondents might have with the subject. This question is used for understanding the market as well in social sciences. Likert scale questions are classified into Even Likert Scale and Odd Likert Scale questions. In case a poll creator intends to collect specific insights, a midpoint isn’t required. In such cases, Even Likert Scale questions are used while in cases where a neutral response is required. Odd Likert Scale questions are implemented.

A semantic differential scale question asks respondents to rate a particular entity such as a product, brand or organization on a scale with grammatically polar adjectives at the two ends of the scale. For instance, to measure the power of a product in the market in comparison to competitors, the semantic differential scale will have strong/weak as the polar adjectives. It’s an extremely reliable poll question type to collect precise respondent data. In terms of language, the genuineness of responses and inference, this scale has surpassed the performance of other poll questions.

There are some answer options which will be more important to the respondents than the other options. This question type is used to understand the importance of different parameters by allowing respondents to allot different sums for different parameters in the question.

Demographic poll questions are used where private information such as age, occupation, income, ethnicity etc. needs to be extracted from respondents. Demographic question type provides details on the basis of which an organization can segregate their customer database to conduct better marketing activities in a cost-effective manner.

User experience can be enhanced by using images, even in polls. As a respondent, one would be inclined towards providing poll responses. As a poll creator, you can increase response rates for polls by using images in poll questions.

Knowing customer priorities about various products or brands can provide insights to a poll creator that can’t be gained using any other question type. Using rank order poll questions, you can ask the respondents to rate the options on the basis of a particular characteristic.

Generally used to monitor pain amongst patients in hospitals, Visual analog scale questions have evolved into being used in polls and online surveys to understand customer attitudes and traits on a continuous scale.

Collecting accurate information from polls can be a challenging task, but understanding your audience and writing great content will go a long way. If you have ever read our previous posts, you’ll know that writing an effective poll is an art form. It requires getting the correct information from your respondents in a limited period of time. Here some practical tips to create effective polls.

Be Direct and Ask Multiple-Choice Questions : Multiple-choice questions give the respondent a chance to see all the options, making their task easy. Be bold and make sure that you are communicating your purpose. A good multiple choice question should be mutually exclusive, avoiding ambiguity at all costs. A poor question example is “Describe your political affiliation? A – Democrat B – Republican.” This is a poor question because it assumes that the audience can only affiliate with one of two parties. This will affect your accuracy because it doesn’t account for Independents, the Green Party, etc., etc.

Speak Your Respondent’s Language: Use simple, direct and specific language in your questions. Start with basic questions and then make it more specific. An excellent poll reads in a way that the reader can understand. And unless your polls are industry-specific, you should avoid jargon at all costs. This can create confusion, which leads to response bias.

No Double Barrel Questions: We know that you are trying to get the most out of your polling. But do not use it as an excuse to ask an informal fallacy such as a double-barrel question. These occur when a question involves multiple subjects, yet has only one answer. For example, “Should the Government spend less on Military and more on Healthcare?” The problem with the question is it’s impossible to see what the respondent is answering. Is the respondent opinionated about one subject and not the other? Instead, ask two separate questions to get most accurate answers. The best way to answer the above question: “Should the Government spend less on Military?” Followed up by “Should the Government spend more on Healthcare?”

Find the Right Sample Size : Generally speaking, most national and state polls have a 500 - 1,000-person sample size. This results in a margin of error of 5% - 3.2%. As the sample size increases, the sample size decreases. However, as the sample size decreases, the returns diminish. So for example, the margin of error decreases significantly more moving from a survey of 50 - 100 than from a survey from 500 - 1,000. Unless tenths of a percent matter to you, your survey sample does not need to be in the ten's of thousands.

Find the Right Medium to Ask Your Questions: Do you have a landline phone? Would you pick up when you get a call from an unfamiliar or unlisted number? Do you live in a rural area? These questions can lead to survey bias. For example, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to use a landline phone. With the accessibility of the Internet, web scraping or data mining should help pollsters get accurate analytics on national or statewide elections. While it can almost be impossible to get a perfect representative sample, the Internet is almost universally used. If you think that candidates are not already using big data, read this article.

Remove All Bias: Creating leading questions will not represent an honest opinion of the respondent. In politics, loaded questions will especially suppress rational thought and result in knee-jerk reactions from your respondent. What is the difference in response to the questions “Do you support Obamacare” and “Do you support the Affordable Care Act?” Both represent the same law and the majority of Americans are familiar with the terms.

Great Polls Have a Flow. Rank Questions Accordingly: Ordering your questions is important to give a sense of flow to the survey. Always rank your questions from simple concepts to complex ones.